How a Cocoa Shortage Put Penguin Bars on Thin Ice
If you're reaching for a Club or Penguin bar hoping for a chocolate fix, think again.
The popular snacks no longer qualify as chocolate under UK regulations because their coating now contains too little cocoa to legally carry the label.
Manufacturer Pladis is adapting to major cost pressures driven by a fragile cocoa supply chain.
The UK cannot grow cocoa. Instead, it comes from a narrow belt around the equator, with more than half of the UK's cocoa beans sourced from the Ivory Coast and Ghana. However, these countries face a challenging mix of weather extremes.
In 2023, rainfall more than doubled the 30-year average in the region, causing black pod disease to spread rapidly – rotting the pods before they could be harvested. In early 2024, a drought followed, worsened by El Niño, a natural warming phase in the Pacific.
Scientists at World Weather Attribution said the heatwave that followed was 10 times more likely and 4°C hotter as a result of climate change. The combination means farmers in the area have been unable to grow and harvest reliability, resulting in supply falling short and prices rising sharply.
This is evident in the wider market, where cocoa prices remain three times higher in 2025 than in 2022. The UK itself has found it particularly tough, as imports fell by 10% in two years while prices rose 20%.
Changing procurement tactics
Faced with this reality, procurement teams at Pladis have had to make changes.
The company owns McVitie's, Godiva, Go Ahead and Jacobs. To keep costs down, they have reformulated; now, instead of using cocoa butter and cocoa solids in their bars' coating, they have switched to cheaper fats like palm oil and shea oil.
These ingredients are more stable in cost and supply but come from different sources, often in Southeast Asia and West Africa.
However, this has left them with a regulatory choice as UK food standards say a product must contain at least 20% cocoa solids to qualify as “milk chocolate”. Club and Penguin bars now fall below that, meaning they must legally be labelled as “chocolate flavour”.
Pladis confirmed the change, saying: “We made some changes to McVitie's Penguin and Club earlier this year, where we are using a chocolate flavour coating with cocoa mass, rather than a chocolate coating.”
But, the company insists the taste holds up: “Sensory testing with consumers shows the new coatings deliver the same great taste as the originals.”
Still, the nostalgic slogan on Club bars, "If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club,” now reads more like a historical footnote.
Supply chain volatility goes global
Pressure is mounting for businesses, with inflation figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing that, as of March 2025, food inflation sits at 3.1%, while chocolate-specific inflation has climbed to nearly 17%.
Manufacturers are therefore in a tight spot, but so are consumers who battle the rising cost of living.
Recent cases of inflation in once affordable snacks now mean consumers have to take pause before buying, while many feel short-changed by shrinkflation in iconic products such as the Toblerone.
Whether it tastes the same or not, the truth beneath the wrapper is that Penguin and Club bars no longer meets the cocoa threshold – and consumers will take note.
